Do state police still set speed traps in the sky?

This sign in the northbound lanes of the Pennsylvania Turnpike's… (DAN HARTZELL, THE MORNING…)

March 11, 2013|Dan Hartzell | The Road Warrior

Q: We have seen the highway signs that read "speed enforced from aircraft." Is this really so? I don't know of anyone that was ever caught speeding in such a way. Today we hear so much about unmanned 'drones,' including a recent story in the Sunday paper about the increasing use of surveillance drones by various government agencies. Could it be that police will use such a device to keep an eye on highway speeders?

— Keith Metz, Upper Macungie Township

A: Big Brother is indeed watching from on high, Keith. You never know when or where he might be. And if it's OK for him to clock us land-based road warriors using aircraft with pilots, why would the absence of actual people in the plane make a difference?

Before we steer to the controversial topic of drones, I've also wondered to what extent police actually utilize the eye-in-the-sky approach to speed enforcement, or whether they do it at all any more, since I've never heard a firsthand account of anyone getting a speeding ticket from the air, either. But it does happen, including in our region.

A report from the state police Fogelsville barracks indicated that a "fixed-wing aircraft" conducted "a speed-enforcement effort … to observe and clock vehicles" on I-78 in Upper Macungie Township between 10 a.m. and noon on Feb. 1, 2012. Fourteen motorists got speeding tickets and four warnings were issued for unspecified "other violations," according to the report, which concluded, "PSP Fogelsville will continue with periodic use of SPARE [State Police Aerial Reconnaissance Enforcement] on I-78 in an effort to target aggressive drivers and reduce crashes."

In November 2011 we published a police brief noting that seven speed demons got clipped, also on 78 in Upper Macungie, with a similar reminder from police that more instances of SPARE were planned. I failed to notice the brief, or had forgotten it.

But we're onto something, Keith, regarding the rarity of aerial speed enforcement today compared with that of previous years, according to state police Lt. William Arndt, commander of the Special Services Section, which administers aviation, mounted police and electronic surveillance services.

"You don't see a whole lot of it today," Arndt said of SPARE, adding that it's labor-intensive at a time when state police are chronically short-staffed. "Back in the in early '90s, SPARE was in its heyday," with the invisible speed traps in the sky "just knocking them dead out there" in terms of nabbing dangerous high-speed drivers, Arndt said.

One trooper in a cruiser with a radar unit can enforce the speed limit effectively (though sometimes a separate "chase car" is used), while aerial enforcement, in addition to the cost and logistics of flying the aircraft, adds a pilot and a spotter with a specially designed stopwatch that clocks vehicle speed the old-fashioned way as the vehicle crosses measured white lines on the roadway. Though Arndt said higher-tech equipment might be available, our state law sanctions only the stopwatch method.

Arndt couldn't quantify the degree to which the use of SPARE has diminished, but noted that the aviation section, which also provides surveillance, search-and-rescue, transport and other services for a range of federal, state and local law-enforcement agencies, consists of six helicopters and five planes, with five fixed-wing and 15 helicopter pilots, all of whom are troopers with at least three years' patrol experience on the ground (literally). The service at one time had a total of 35 trooper pilots, according to the state police website.

Sgt. Joe Joynes, a trooper pilot with 15 years' experience flying SPARE runs, said they generally cruise at about 100 mph at a height of 2,500 feet, making left-turn loops over the highway, the observer in the left-rear seat, behind the pilot. Another indicator of the cutbacks is that SPARE now operates exclusively from Capital City Airport outside Harrisburg; sites in Latrobe and Williamsport have been dropped. "It definitely has slacked off," Joynes said. Planes are used almost exclusively for SPARE because fuel-hungry helicopters cost far more to operate, Joynes said.

Aerial speed enforcement in Pennsylvania dates to 1968, according to the website. Dangerous sections of highway where many motorists push speeding to the limit, so to speak, are targeted. The Cemetery Curve section of Route 22 in Easton was the focus in 1987, when 150 citations rained on motorists in a monthlong period from early August to early September. Twenty-six years later, there's far more traffic, and more speeding, but concentrated monthlong SPARE events seem unlikely, given the state's budgetary challenges.